The exhibition ‘Breathing Color’ at the Design Museum makes you think differently about color, leads you to understand that color is way more complex than we tend to think of it, and ultimately brings you to fall in love with color. Not with specific color, blue, or red, or pink, but rather with the way color can enrich our lives and our intellect, with the notion that color is not consistent or infinite, but rather fragile, unstable, and constantly changes according to its relationship to light. In this solo exhibition, influential Dutch designer Hella Jongerius, who has devoted her creative career to the study and exploration of color and pigments, brings her world to the forefront stage of the entire bottom floor of the new building. She is remembered for transforming the famed Standard Chair of Jean Prouve into rich hues for Vitra and for the tables that reflect the change of colors for Galerie Kreo, enriching our experience of color. Here, Jongerius takes the viewer through the various times of the day and shows us how light has an affect on the way we see the color, and for that she uses objects of various mediums, from glass to textiles, from furniture to ceramics, all textural materials. The light, we learn in this remarkable, beautiful exhibition, has to power to change the mood of the object, turning it from powerful to soft, from rich to delicate, ultimately changing our moods, our perceptions. We also learn that even though color is so important, we do not have to have a favorite color
